Forum:Mobility
Uh, so yeah. Here's a message left from Wikia staff telling us we need to make our infoboxes more... mobile-friendly. The staff member said to discuss it with the community (so all four of us or whatever it is now), so I'll start the discussion by saying I'm sick of how Wikia has pushed all this "Mobile is the greatest thing in the world" crap onto Wikis. Thoughts? —'Ceiling Master' 23:36, August 4, 2015 (UTC) :I know I haven't been around awhile (as if it was a short time I've been gone), and I'll say that our wiki has been stubborn to change in the past, but, man, this infobox change is like only slightly more user-friendly than they currently are. All it really it does is make the box partially show in a tab with an arrow that lets you see the whole thing. Images are still at full size, rather than a more decent size. Still takes up the whole width of the screen at the time, just cuts off the bottom part. Would it be worth to change for what Wikia claims as more mobile traffic, which is across all wikis and might not be true of ours? I'd say I'm not one to say, I've been back for about three to four days, but I felt like after checking out the whole that it would be worth noting what actually changes by incorporating these new infoboxes. By the way, much like those in Monobook would check how something looks in Oasis, you could use "?useskin=wikiamobile" at the end of a page URL to check how something might look on the mobile version of the site. I say might because, comparing my phone's version of the mobile site versus the web version of the mobile site, you do see more of the infobox, depending on length. I can't really comment on the app version of the site. - McGillivray227 02:15, August 5, 2015 (UTC) ::I don't use mobile wikia very much since it kind of sucks, and the infoboxes are certainly not one of the problems. The few times I've gone on ZP on my phone, I've never found infoboxes to be an issue at all, but I'm not really sure how strict Wikia's going to be about this. I hadn't joined ZP yet all the other times Wikia tried to shove policies and crappy features down our throats, so I guess you "old timers" would probably know how to deal with this better than I do (assuming everyone shares my opinion). HH 04:44, August 5, 2015 (UTC) I'm having a hard time figuring out how to see what this new format actually looks like, so my opinion is mostly based on what McGee reported. As far as I can tell, making this change doesn't hurt anything, at least as long as we put in the extra work to make sure everything looks the same in the standard formats. It's a bit annoying, for sure, and I agree that the mobile format has far worse problems than the infoboxes, but as long as the Monobook and Oasis (desktop) formats end up looking the same, I see no reason to actively resist this. We've put up with worse before. Jedimasterlink (talk) 19:36, August 5, 2015 (UTC) The better the site looks across all mediums the..uh..better things are. If these new infoboxes manages to look good on desktop and mobile then I'm all for it. Wikia shoving things on us can be annoying (remember that Quiz anyone? Like seriously what was the point of that?) but when they have a legitimate point it would be foolish to ignore it based on past experiences. Also welcome back Sally, it's good to see you. I was going to give you a welcome on your talk page but I didn't want to jump the gun and ambush you after making two edits in case you weren't really coming back. Oni Link 01:10, August 6, 2015 (UTC) Well, it seems that everyone's... kind of okay with this? I'll admit that I'm pretty averse to the whole idea, but if someone wants to try and "convert" one of the infoboxes and see what it looks like, you can generate a draft . —'Ceiling Master' 01:48, August 6, 2015 (UTC) :I'm in agreement. I'm averse to it myself and don't particularly feel like working on making new infoboxes myself, but if a standard is made and we end up changing them all I guess I'm fine with that. ~Minish (talk) 04:24, August 6, 2015 (UTC) ::I've been looking at a little more, but I won't really know what they look like in Monobook, we've essentially jury-rigged it to look like the old version of the site from way back when, no? If you follow some links (specifically to ), they've got images of the new infoboxes look (and, coding-wise, have a lot more variables and much closer to HTML coding from what I've read) and they have links to wikis that are using the new version of the infobox. If you go to them, they have no colour in the Monobook theme, but they do in Oasis. As in, for example, the God of War Wiki has a brown-ish infobox for characters in Oasis, but is pure white in Monobook. Could we jury-rig it again? Maybe. Not sure how many coders are around still. I don't mind relaying what info there is about it, but I'm really not too keen on saying that this is what we should do because I don't know how much has really changed (a rundown of some major things on my talk page would actually be nice if someone knows, I'd really appreciate it) and I don't want to go full "WELL, BACK IN MY DAY" about this. ::Also, for anybody that can't really see the mobile version on desktop, let me give an example. So, to see the Link page, the URL would be "zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Link". Monobook users who want to see the Oasis version (not sure if works the other way around) can use the URL "zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Link?useskin=oasis". Similarly, "zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Link?useskin=wikiamobile" sends you to the mobile version of the site, which is already based upon the Oasis design foremost I might add. Obviously all minus the quotes. The help page I linked to earlier has some example wikis that are already using the new infobox, so it's easy to use as a testing ground. Otherwise, just use your mobile to see the mobile versions of site, easiest technical method. - McGillivray227 04:37, August 6, 2015 (UTC) :::I'm pretty sure I could come up with something if I worked at it -- it's more complicated than standard wikitext but it's pretty simple HTML/CSS stuff -- but more to the point I think the lukewarm response here and the fact that even on mobile, not that much really changes (save for the tab that makes it so the infobox is collapsed at default) makes me think it's not really worth the effort. I think our infoboxes work splendidly right now, and they don't even look that bad on mobile (they just take up a lot of space...and so do these, if they aren't collapsed). So I guess my "vote" for this is a neutral one, and if people really wanted this to happen I would probably be willing to see if I could get some infoboxes to work, but I don't think anyone really does want this to happen, is the thing. ~Minish (talk) 13:57, August 6, 2015 (UTC) ::::I really don't understand it. It makes no sense to me what the staff just said. I know how to handle with CSS and HTML but why should we make our infoboxes more mobile friendly? Again, it makes no sense because every smartphone and tablet can handle with HTML5. Mobile friendly - how?! And again I really don't understand it if you know what I mean. Also, the Wikia mobile skin really don't make any sense because it can't handle CSS codes from our MediaWiki pages. Which engineer thought it would be a great idea to supress all CSS codes for the mobile skin? I'm really really sorry for my expression but it just blows my mind. You can put any HTML code in any page, the mobile skin will most likely not understand it (example: element workes nowhere). Why developed Wikia their own mobile skin? They could just download a more decent mobile skin from MediaWiki.org and install it for all Wikia wikis. Otherwises I don't have any problems to help you with styling and "programming" the infobox templates. I created and designed many infobox templates and they are all running well on all devices and all skins. The mobile skin from Wikia has more or less problems to handle HTML codes. — ShiramLudgerusээ 21:39, August 8, 2015 (UTC)